Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

NOTEBOOK “BRAILSFORD”

BRAILSFORD,THE WAR OF STEEL AND GOLD

Henry NoelBrailsford.The War of Steel and Gold.

A Study of the Armed Peace, London, 1914.(The book is dated March 1914) (p. 317)

“In the Balkans it is likely enough that Austria, backed by-the preponderant influence of the Triple Alliance, would have availed herself of one of the several crises which have followed the young Turkish revolution, to force her way to Salonica and to annex a part at least of Macedonia....

“Europe had a long experience of German ‘hegemony’ during the quarter of a century which elapsed between the fall of the French Empire and the creation of the Franco-Russian Alliance. Nothing disastrous happened. No little states were over- run, no neighbour’s landmarks removed, no thrones overturned, no national or religious liberties menaced” (p. 34).

“In Europe the epoch of conquest is over, and save in the Balkans and perhaps on the fringes of the Austrian and Russian Empires, it is as certain as anything in politics can be, that the frontiers of our modern national states are finally drawn. My own belief is that there will be no more wars among the six Great Powers” (p. 35).

“The present territorial arrangement of Europe follows with few exceptions the lines of nationality” (p. 35).

“Shall the Germans dig for iron ore on the slopes of the Atlas, and carry it in the form of steel rails to Baghdad? That is the typical question of modern diplomacy, and sanely regarded, it is a good deal more important than the typical question of the old world, whether the King of Spain should be a Bourbon or a Habsburg. To settle this question, and similar questions which belong to the same order, the young men of Europe are drilled, the battleships are built and the taxes squandered. Nothing is at stake which can affect the fortunes or ownership of a single acre of European soil. Nothing would be changed in the politics or religion or public life of any European state if these questions were settled otherwise or were not settled at all” (p. 36).

“But who in England would have cared if the iron ore of Morocco had gone to cast German cannon at Essen, instead of French cannon at Creusot?” (p. 36).

“The Entente Cordiale between Britain and France, which marked the beginning of the tension with Germany, was based, so far as the world knows, upon a single document, which was nothing but a business-like adjustment of French and British interests in Egypt and Morocco” (p. 37).

“A German firm, the Mannesmann Brothers, could indeed boast that it had obtained an exclusive concession to work all the mines of Morocco in return for money which it had lent to an embarrassed Sultan during its civil wars. That this was the real issue is proved by the terms which were more than once discussed between Paris and Berlin for the settlement of the dispute. A ‘détente’ or provisional settlement of the dispute was concluded in 1910, which had only one clause—that German finance should share with French finance in the various undertakings and companies which aimed at ‘opening up’ Morocco by ports, railways, mines, and other public works. No effect was ever given to this undertaking, and German irritation at the delays of French diplomacy and French finance culminated in the dispatch of the gunboatPantherto Agadir as a prelude to further ‘conversations’. Had M. Caillaux remained in power, we know from the subsequent investigations before the Senate’s Committee, how those conversations would have ended. He would have effected not merely an adjustment of French and German colonial interests, but a general understanding which would have covered the whole field of Franco-German relations. The points on which he had begun to negotiate were all economic, and chief among them was a proposal to put an end to the boycott by French finance of the Baghdad railway, and to admit German securities to quotation on the Paris Exchange. The alarm which this bold step by M. Caillaux caused both to French patriots and to British imperialists is not yet forgotten, and its echo was heard both in London and Paris, when, towards the close of 1913, M. Caillaux returned to office. In those informal negotiations he had made the beginnings of a readjustment in Franco-German relations which would have transformed not merely French but European politics, if he had been Premier for a few months longer. French patriots took alarm and feared that he was about to rob them of their dream of a revenge for 1870. British imperialists in our Conservative press assailed him from a fear that if France composed her quarrel with Germany, this country would be left isolated. In a single sentence in the debate (November 27, 1911) which followed this Agadir crisis, Sir Edward Grey used a phrase which showed that our diplomacy had shared the fears of our Conservative press. There was a risk, as he put it, that France might be drawn into the orbit of German diplomacy. It was for that reason, and not because it really concerned us how much or how little compensation France paid to Germany in the Congo for her seizure of Morocco, that we were ready to back the less conciliatory diplomacy of M. Caillaux’s successors, if need be, by force of arms. This was, perhaps, the most instructive incident in the recent history of European diplomacy” (pp. 38-40).

“The French Périer Bank the other day lent a million pounds to the Turkish Government, which it used to pay the first instalment of the purchase price of a dreadnought cruiser built in Newcastle. A few days later it was announced that the same bank, obviously as a part of its commission, had obtained a concession for a railway from Smyrna to the Dardanelles. While we must admit that the export of capital could not be carried out without some movement of goods, there is still a sharp distinction to be made between the financier’s transaction and simple exchange of goods from the standpoint of the sociology of class. Commerce carried on upon an elaborate structure of credit is more profitable to the investing classes than the simpler exchanges which lake place between nations on an equal level of economic development. If we send Welsh coal to France, and receive artificial flowers in exchange, capital makes two profits—the English colliery owner’s profit, and the French sweater’s profit. But if we lend money to the Argentine, and with it she buys rails here, and afterwards sends out meat to be sold here so that the interest on the loan may be paid, then capital has made three profits—the English steel trade’s profit, the Argentine meat trade’s profit and the English banker’s and investor’s profit. It is this third profit which our leisured class chiefly values, and to develop the sort of commerce which requires this credit basis, that is to say, commerce with weaker debtor nations, is the object of imperialism” (pp. 73-74).

“Mr. Mulhall calculated for theDictionary of Political Economythat our foreign and colonial investments grew between 1882 and 1893 at the prodigious rate of 74 per cent per annum. But the decisive evidence is supplied by Sir Robert Giffen. Taking the year 1899, he reckoned that the profits on all our external trade in goods, both foreign and colonial, amounted only to 18 millions sterling. The profit on foreign and colonial investments in the same year he puts at between 90 and 100 millions sterling” (p. 77).

“Ten years later, as Sir George Paish stated in a paper which he read to the Royal Statistical Society, our profits from foreign and colonial investments amounted to 140 millions” (pp. 77-78).

“Behind them[1]are the embassies, and behind the embassies are the fleets of all Europe, which would steam at a few hours’ notice to Turkish waters, if there were any delay or hesitation in paying over the revenues mortgaged to European railway companies or to the holders of Turkish bonds. Diplomacy and armaments are, in a word, employed to enforce the unconscionable and usurious bargains which Baron Hirsch and his imitators have struck, by means of bribery with Turkish Ministers whose hands no honourable man would condescend to shake” (p. 85).

“The posts in the Army and the Civil Services have long been so numerous that they are opened to the sons of the prosperous middle classes. To these people India and Egypt have acquired at last a real meaning—they are the places where a son, a brother, or at least a cousin, is ‘doing well’” (pp. 86-87).

“The War Trust Exposed, by J. T. Walton Newbold, M. A. (The National Labour Press, Manchester, 1d.), deals chiefly with the inter- relation of the British armaments firms.Armaments and Patriotism, by P. W. W. (The Daily News, 1d.) deals fully with Mr. Mulliner’s share in creating the naval scare of 1909.The War Traders, by G. H. Perris (National Peace Council, 167, St. Stephen’s House, Westminster, 2d.), contains most of the facts given in the other two pamphlets with some further matter. All of them are based on material which is official and undeniable” (p. 89, footnote).

“The true facts were stated at the time by Admiral von Tirpitz in the Reichstag and also by the head of the Krupp firm. Parliament preferred to believe Mr. Mulliner. The result was that Mr. McKenna calculated that Germany would have seventeen dreadnoughts at ‘the danger-point’, March 1912, and revised his own programme accordingly. Mr. Balfour even predicted for Germany twenty-one or twenty-five capital ships. The event showed that Admiral von Tirpitz had told the truth: when the time came Germany had nine. The scare cost us the price of the four ‘contingent’ dreadnoughts, a measurable quantity, while it added to Europe’s stores of bitterness and mistrust what no figures can reckon” (p. 91).

“The international relationsof the firms whichtrade in armamentsoffer a tempting field for satire. The inevitable comment lies on the surface of the facts, and they shall bebaldlyset down here. Capital has no patriotism. A leading German firm turns out to be conducted by French directors. German firms are rebuilding the rival Russian navy. British firms have branches in Italy which are building those Italian dreadnoughts that are represented as rivals to our own. The Nobel Trust and till lately the Harvey Company were formed of all the leading armaments firms, British, French, German or American. At one time the French firm of Schneider and the German firm of Krupp united in a syndicate to develop the iron ore fields of Ouenza in Algeria” (p. 92).

“All over the world these forces, concentrated, resolute and intelligent, are ceaselessly at work to defeat the more diffused and less easily directed forces which make for disarmament and peace. The number of persons who have anything to gain by armaments and war is relatively small, when measured against the whole population of the civilised world. But their individual stake is larger, and they work in alliance with Society, which regards Empire as a field for the careers of its sons, and with finance which treats it as a field for investment” (p. 93).

“Mr. Gladstone had come into power after the Midlothian campaign with a programme of resolute opposition to imperialism. The chief act of his administration abroad was the occupation of Egypt. Henceforward Liberalism had a lie in its soul” (pp. 103-04).

“Under such influences Liberalism became an imperialist party, with Lord Rosebery, and, later, Sir Edward Grey as the only possible directors of its foreign policy. Lord Rosebery belonged by marriage to the Rothschild family, and it was the Rothschild influence which brought about the occupation of Egypt” (p. 105).

“There would have been no breach with France, and theEntente Cordialemight have been established some twenty years earlier. European armaments would have been less crushing, and Bismarckian diplomacy less triumphant. Above all, the alliance would never have been concluded which filled the treasury of the Russian autocrat with French gold, and so perpetuated the cruellest of European despotisms” (p. 108).

“‘The following public works were commenced or completed during 1907 at Coomassie:—Post Office, female prison, hospital and dispensary, European hospital, laundry in which to wash Europeans’ clothes, and several buildings for the Gold Coast Regiments.’

“Turning the page, one learns that ‘a 13-hole golf course has been completed’. Gold mines, prisons, barracks, a laundry for Europeans built with public money, and a golf course, these are our works of civilisation. But there is no school” (p. 127).

“In other words, whichever party is in power, the Foreign Secretary will always be an imperialist, a personality whomThe Times, the City and the Conservative Party can unreservedly trust. A Radical can no more become Foreign Secretary than a Roman Catholic can become Lord Chancellor. The doctrine of ‘continuity’ means that foreign affairs have in effect been removed from the sphere of party government, and are now influenced only by the opinions of the governing class, of those, that is to say, who move at court and in society, who regard the army and the civil service as careers reserved for their families, and survey the world beyond these islands mainly as a field for the investment of their surplus wealth” (p. 132).

“Still more important is the impotence of the House of Commons in regard to treaties. Unless they include financial provisions, there is no obligation to submit them to Parliament, and no discussion can take place upon them until they are already signed, ratified, and published to the world. One consequence of this is that a secret treaty is for us no less binding than a public instrument. A secret treaty duly signed and ratified by one British Government would bind its successors. In theory the King and his Foreign Minister, acting with the consent of his colleagues in the Cabinet, can and do contract the most solemn and vital obligations in the name of the forty millions over whom they rule in these islands, without consulting their elected representatives” (pp. 137-38).

“It is frankly admitted in these letters that Lord John Russell, the Prime Minister, was quite unable to control Palmerston, who constantly acted in large issues without the authority either of the whole Cabinet or even of his chief. He even went so far as to recognise Louis Napoleon after the coup d’état entirely on his own responsibility, and against the wishes, not only of public opinion, but of the Queen and his own colleagues. To the suggestion that he should be dismissed, Lord John Russell always answered that if he were dismissed he would avenge himself by going into Opposition and overthrowing the Government. How just this fear was, events showed. He was eventually forced to resign at the end of December 1851. By February 1852 he had unseated his late colleagues. A Cabinet which cannot dispense with a Minister must be prepared to give him a free hand” (pp. 143-44).

“On the other hand, the world in which she[2]moved was a world of monarchs and governments. Nations she neither knew nor recognised. In the tremendous upheaval between 1848 and 1860, which was creating an Italian people, she saw nothing but a series of aggressions by Sardinia against Austria” (pp. 148-49).

“When Palmerston and Louis Napoleon were talking in 1848 of a plebiscite to decide the fate of Lombardy, she declared that ‘it will be a calamity for ages to come’ if peoples are allowed to transfer their allegiance by universal suffrage” (p. 149).

“There must be a more educative propaganda, a more conscious effort to fix principles, before any democracy can be trusted to stand firm in moments of national crisis” (p. 160).

“It is necessary to implant a general and rooted scepticism, which will instinctively ask, when the glowing words and the specious abstractions are deployed, ‘About what loan or concession or sphere of economic interest are you really talking?’ Such a task is beyond the scope, it is sometimes beyond the insight, of the special propagandists of peace” (p. 160).

“Talking today of disarmament and arbitration, he will work tomorrow for a party which is hardly less dependent than its rival on the great contractors and bankers who maintain the modern connection of diplomacy and finance. The work of education and organisation on behalf of peace is carried on adequately only by the socialist parties, and they alone represent a force whose undivided vote will always be cast against militarism and imperialism” (p. 161).

“...War is an anachronism, indeed, well-nigh an impossibility in a society based on a respect for private property, and accustomed to conduct its business by a system of cosmopolitan credit” (p. 162).

“Let us admit at once that war is a folly from the standpoint of national self-interest; it may none the less be perfectly rational from the standpoint of a small but powerful governing class” (p. 163).

“When the Triple Entente is dominant, it takes Morocco and divides Persia. When the Triple Alliance recovers its lead, it takes Tripoli, assures its hold in Bosnia, and makes progress in the economic penetration of Asiatic Turkey” (p. 167).

“It is characteristic of our civilisation to disguise the connection of diplomacy with armaments on the one hand and finance on the other under an elaborate code of courtesies and hypocrisies” (p. 168).

“If all the Great Powers were to resolve tomorrow by a sudden inspiration of good sense to reduce their armaments by half, that would not free us from the moral consequences of the elusive conflict to adjust the balance of prestige and force” (p. 169).

“It would give some guarantee, if the Committee was well selected, that the policy of the Foreign Office really reflected the will of the nation” (p. 213).

“It is only by concentrating on such proposals as these, but more especially on the creation of a permanent Committee for foreign policy, that a democracy may hope to exert a steady influence on the factors which make for peace and war, govern the growth of armaments, and limit our opportunities for humane service in the world” (p. 217).

“Russia is sensitive because she depends as absolutely as any Latin American Republic upon her repute in Western markets. She must float by far the greater part of her loans abroad. She cannot even provide from her own resources for the municipal enterprise of her cities. Her undeveloped coal and iron and petroleum fields all await the fertilisation of foreign capital. If we can conceive for a moment what German opinion would mean to us, if we had to float Consols through the Deutsche Bank, if Manchester had to go to Berlin for money to build her tramways, if a South Wales coal mine were awaiting the good opinion of some financier in Hamburg, we shall be able to realise dimly why and how much the good opinion of the English people matters to the Russian Government. Credit is a delicate possession. So long as British investors thought of Russia either as a hostile empire dangerous to ourselves, or as an unstable autocracy menaced by revolution, it was in vain that the Russian financier brought his proposals to the City. Prudence, patriotism and humanity were all against him. The change in the opinions of the moneyed classes began when the Conservative press advocated arapprochement, whenThe Timesceased to give prominence to news damaging to the autocracy, and when it was known that an agreement over Persia was in process of arrangement. There was no mystery about the reasons for this change of attitude. Sir Edward Grey had said that it was necessary to restore Russia to her rank as a Great Power in order to redress the balance in Europe. In plain words, our diplomacy wanted Russian support against Germany, and France was urging and engineering the reconciliation. The early months of 1906 were the critical moment for Russian finance, and it happened to coincide with the critical moment in the development of her Constitution. While she was endeavouring to secure a loan of one hundred millions in Western Europe, the elections for the First Duma were about to be held. The Constitution was still a sheet of paper. Everything turned on the ability of the Duma to assert itself, to control the bureaucracy, to make itself the supreme power in Russia. There was one obvious method open to it. It must possess control of the purse, and that meant at the moment control over this foreign loan. If the loan were concluded before it met, the bureaucracy would meet it with its war- chest full. For a few months or weeks European public opinion was potentially the master of Russia’s destinies. It professed full sympathy with the constitutional movement, and it had the means of giving its sympathy effect. The Russian Liberals (Cadets) were at one with the Socialists in urging that the granting of the loan should be made conditional on the consent of the Duma. This would have involved a delay of two or three months, but it would have enabled the Parliamentary majority to drive its bargain with a Tsar who had already repented his concessions. Fresh from their sweeping victories at the polls, the Liberals and Socialists might have said to the Tsar’s Ministers: ‘We have Russia behind us, and we have Europe behind us. Your coffers are empty; your credit is exhausted. Concede our full rights of responsible government, and we will vote your taxes and sanction your loan. Deny our rights, and we are convinced that neither in London nor in Paris will you find the money to finance your oppressions.’ But the great loan had already been floated in Paris and London by March 1906, and in May when the Duma assembled, it found itself confronted by a Government which had nothing to fear from Russia, and nothing more to hope from Europe. Europe had enabled it to pay its Cossacks. For two generations we closed our money-market to the Tsars. We opened it three months too soon. Had we waited those three months, as the Russian Liberal press implored us to wait, the progressive parties must have triumphed. The Cossack can do little, unless the financier stands behind him. But no Parliament can effectively wield the traditional weapon of supply, if foreign banks have first provided for the despot’s needs. The decision, in this instance, rested with London. The Paris banks, weary of the burden of supporting the tottering Russian chaos, had made it a condition of their supporting this loan, that English banks should share the profitable burden. It lay with the English banks on their side to insist on the brief delay required to obtain the Duma’s assent. It may be said that ‘business is business’; one cannot fairly expect a banker, when he is offered a large commission for floating a loan, to weigh all the consequences which his action will have for the liberties of a foreign nation” (pp. 225-28).

“With all our buying, we never bought Russian loyalty, nor prevented her from coquetting with the German rival. Yet the cards were all in our hands. Whatever else Germany can do for Russia, she cannot lend her money. Had we made terms before we lent, had we even checked the flow of gold, we could have won some measure of control over Russian policy. If France had backed us (and we were earning her backing during the Moroccan crisis), it ought to have been possible to say to Russia: ‘No more money until Persia is evacuated.’ Persia, after all, is a luxury for Russia; money is a necessity” (p. 229).

“Europe made or pretended to make some futile efforts to prevent the outbreak of the Balkan wars. They failed because they were insincere. Russia, as we now know, so far from wishing to prevent the war, had actually arranged it by presiding over the formation of the Balkan League. At the very moment when she joined the concert in declaring that none of the Allies would be allowed to keep the territory they won, she had set her seal to a treaty of partition, and accepted the post of arbiter in the division of the territory. It is such duplicity which makes concerts ineffective. Either of these wars could have been prevented, if the French banks had been forbidden to finance the combatants. They were not forbidden because Russia willed it otherwise” (pp. 230-31).

“The system known as peonage is, on the other hand, general throughout Latin America, and the capital by which it is worked is often foreign and sometimes British. It is the rule in Mexico and Brazil, and probably in all the more backward Republics of South America. The victim, usually a native, but sometimes a white or a half- breed, incurs a debt to the planter or merchant, and by the Latin American law of debtor and creditor, which knows no Truck Acts,[3]becomes in effect his slave until the debt is paid off. It never is paid off; the planter keeps the books. Under this transparent fiction of debt, slaves are bought and sold, villages broken up, peasant landowners reduced to the level of serfs, and tribes carried off to distant scenes of oppression. Children are bought and sold, and young women driven into commercial prostitution. All of this is a typical expression of Latin American civilisation. But foreign capital venturing into these regions adapts itself to its environment, and does in Mexico as the Mexicans do. It turns the rather slovenly, inefficient oppressions of the lazy Spanish landowner into a competent and extensive system, conducted with a ruthlessness and on a scale which transcend the habits of the country. The spectacle is not one which a European democracy ought to watch with indifferent eyes and folded arms. If the people of Mexico or Brazil developed a capitalistic system of their own, then however gross its evils might be, the process ought clearly to be allowed to follow its own natural evolution. For purely Mexican wrongs, the Mexicans themselves must find the remedy. But the European financier goes forth equipped. with resources taken from our stores on a career of conquest and exploitation, protected by our flag and backed by our prestige” (pp. 236-37).

“The debatable area, where recognition[4]might either be granted or refused, would still be considerable, and would include Russia, Turkey, China, Persia, the Portuguese colonies, and most of Latin America” (pp. 242-43).

“If we were to take the sum by which British and German armaments have increased in the present century, it would be possible to allocate the increase, roughly, somewhat as follows: 50 per cent or less for the settlement of the question, Who shall exploit Morocco?; 25 per cent or more for the privilege of building a railway to Baghdad and beyond it; 25 per cent or more for the future eventualities which remain unsettled—the fate of the Portuguese colonies in Africa, and the destinies of China. In the second place, the delimitation of spheres of interest is almost inevitably fatal to the national existence of the country partitioned, and as inevitably adds a vast burden to the commitments of the imperial power. Persia furnishes the obvious illustration. Sir Edward Grey is clearly resolved that he will not allow himself by the march of events to be drawn into the assumption of any direct responsibility for the administration of the British sphere. It is a laudable resolve, but Russia may at any moment frustrate it” (pp. 246-47).

“Our own claim to the lion’s share, the Yangtze Valley, is admitted by no other power, and it is doubtful whether the Foreign Office still maintains it” (p. 248).

“It is the interest of the whole class which exports capital abroad. But it would be folly to ignore or minimise the direct interest of the trade. It is an interest which happens to be firmly entrenched in political circles, and as the exploit of Mr. Mulliner shows, it is a singularly alert and energetic interest. If public life continues to develop on the present lines, the great scandal of tomorrow will be a discovery that the Liberal Party funds have been invested not in Marconis, but in Krupps” (pp. 267-68).

“What a monstrous theory it is that Britain and Russia, simply because they have considerable material interests, political, strategic and mercantile, in Persia, should have the right to dispose of the destinies of its people” (p. 290).

“It would, of course, be folly to suppose that the acceptance of this principle of the supremacy of the Concert [of the Great Powers] would at once create harmony, and bring about a reduction of armaments. But it would at once achieve this—it would make a standard for the conscience of the civilised world, it would provide an objective test by which the loyalty of any policy might be tried, and above all it would supply a common ground on which all the parties of peace might take their stand. It would conduce to a gradual slackening of the European tension, a gradual loosening of the existing alliances, and in time create an atmosphere in which a proposal for the reduction of armaments, and eventually some scheme for the creation of a loose Federal Council to decide the common affairs of Europe might at least be considered” (p. 293).

“On the plane of class-egoism, armaments are for the capitalist class entirely rational; the competition to accumulate them has an adequate motive, and the struggle for a balance of power is seen to be a phase and expression of modern finance” (p. 310).

“Men are reluctant to allow that the concerns which divide states are at bottom petty and sordid. We dignify them with great abstract words; we invoke the memories of heroic times. We play with the legendary inheritance of the balance of power, until we persuade ourselves that our homes are in danger, and our faiths and liberties at stake. These are the terrors of an older world, as insubstantial today as the ghosts of Marlborough and Wellington. The powers struggle today over nothing vital, nothing homely, nothing relevant to our daily life. A romantic sentimentalism in the masses plays into the hands of a shrewd realism in the ruling class” (pp. 315-16).

[1]Holders of Turkish bonds.—Ed.

[2]The Queen.—Ed.

[3]Payment of wages in kind.—Ed.

[4]This refers to government sanction for the operation of British capital abroad.